Barack Obama’s 60th Birthday Bash Is a Meat-Free Affair
The former president is partying with close friends in Martha's Vineyard and dining on a Questlove-curated menu of plant-based options
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Former President Barack Obama is celebrating his 60th birthday on with a party on Saturday, August 7 – and the A-list crowd of friends and well-wishers joining him on Martha’s Vineyard for the occasion (hello, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Bruce Springsteen) will be dining on plant-based dishes. The vegan Obama birthday party menu was curated by musician, filmmaker, and Impossible Foods investor Questlove and featured some of the noted foodie’s own dishes, such as Questlove’s Cheesesteak Eggrolls, made with Impossible “beef” and Perfect Day Inc. “cheese” sauce, Bloomberg reports.
The celebration of Obama’s big six-oh was originally set to include some 475 guests, but growing concerns regarding the Delta variant’s spread lead to a decision to scale back. According to The New York Times, a number of former White House officials – and a couple of retired late night tv talk show hosts – found themselves removed from the guest list of the outdoor, tented garden party. Hopefully, they’ll still be able to get an Impossible burger somewhere on the island. We’re sure they’re devastated to miss out on the vegan spam musubi.
Even PETA got in on the party, toasting the decision to go meat-free by sending the Obamas a vegan pineapple cake – a nod to the former President’s Hawaiian roots – along with a tiny doggie carrot cake for Obama family dog Sunny.
“This marks the first – and we know not the last – meat-free presidential birthday bash,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk wrote in an email. “Our cakes extend the aloha spirit to him and to all the animals in the land.”
Newkirk might be on to something there. Current Vice-President Kamala Harris told reporters earlier this year that she’s “dabbling” with a plant-based lifestyle and that she’s currently following the Mark Bittman-approved “vegan before 6 p.m.” approach to her diet.
RELATED: The Met Gala is Celebrating ‘American Independence’ with Its First Plant-Based Menu
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